Review: Is this the book of the year? Colson Whiteheads Harlem trilogy meets its perfect, gritty end

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Colson Whitehead’s latest foray into the bent world of “reluctant fence” Ray Carney — “Cool Machine,” the third and final installment of his Harlem Trilogy — is an American epic disguised as a heist novel.It’s a dizzyingly brilliant measure of the versatility and depth of the acclaimed author’s literary talent.Book ReviewCool Machine By Colson Whitehead Doubleday: 368 pages, $30If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.After writing two books dealing with monstrous historical trauma and institutional abuse — “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” for which he won two successive Pulitzers — Whitehead pivots to an entirely new genre, subverting it, toying with it, making it wholly his own.

And while the Harlem novels, too, have a great deal to say about serious subjects such as systemic racism, corruption, and crimes and misdemeanors of various proportions, they often lean on humor to get the message across.In fact, it’s easy to envision the author at his laptop, as exhilarated as his prose, cracking himself up over how he bends language, employs slang, and forges descriptions like this one about a bar where Carney and a partner in crime conspire over how to fence a stolen diamond necklace: “He met Flinch Wilson at the Marlin, a narrow dive on 110th and Broadway with a decor inspired by an old leather shoe that lived in a drainage pipe.” Or this about a rival who has it out for Carney and his cohorts: “Buzz struck him as a plumber, one who comes back when you aren’t home to strangle your parakeet if you stiff him on the bill.” Books Two miles north of Interstate 10, a cool breeze ruffles the overgrown grass around the Dozier School for Boys.“Cool Machine” is set in ...